Brakes squealing, he pulled up in front of the house. He hit the front door with his wet fist, banging, banging, banging harder, harder. “Open the door! Open the door! Open the goddamn door, you—”
“You’re all wet,” Gordon said in all his volitionless inertia, not letting him in, continuing to hold the door ajar, standing there in his tight gray pajamas, the sleeves skimpy, the cloth dull as his eyes.
He pushed his way inside, wanting to tell his brother how he’d gone through this once and he wasn’t going to go through it again, having his life turned upside down and everything he cared about threatened and compromised. He had known this wouldn’t work. What had he been thinking? He should have just sold this place a long time ago and forced his brother to go his own way, instead of always thinking he had to be the one to pick up all the pieces and put everything back together, because that’s the way it had always been, because that’s all he knew how to do, it seemed, anymore.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Gordon asked.
He sank onto the couch, for a moment bewildered that he had not said it and could not, because the wound that was his heart continued pumping its spasm of bloodred heat in his chest while his eyes tried to adjust to the dimness of this shabby room.
“Can I get you something to drink? A glass of water? A beer? I have one. I keep it there.” He pointed toward the kitchen. “For you. It’s cold. It’s in the refrigerator. I can go get it.”
Dennis laughed. He couldn’t help it. “What do you do here? What do you do when you come home?”
“I read. I watch television. Sometimes. If there’s something good on.”
“Tell me something. Am I the only one who ever comes here?”
“No,” Gordon said, blinking.
“Is that where you sit?” He pointed to the chair in the corner. “It is, isn’t it. That way you can see the street and the TV all at the same time.” He chuckled. “Gordon’s window on the world, huh?”
“Don’t be mad at me, Dennis. I didn’t do anything.”
“But I did, right?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You know all those letters you got? All the family news, the stupid jokes, the newspaper clippings? Well, did you ever wonder what was really going on here? Or did you think it was all the same?”
“I knew it was hard. How hurt you all were.” Gordon stared down at the floor, head bobbing faintly up and down in that maddeningly goofy way that made him look so stupid and inept. “I know what it did to everyone.”
“I don’t mean that! You’re still so caught up in self-pity you think everything’s about you, don’t you? Poor Gordon, nothing ever goes right for him, does it? Well, guess what, poor Gordon, while you were licking your wounds,
I
was the one alone here. Because of you
I
didn’t have a father or mother anymore. From that point on it was all up to me. Me! They expected
me
to make everything right.”
“I’m sorry, Dennis.”
“You’re sorry? Well, what the hell good is that?” he exploded, fists so tightly clenched that the nails gouged his palms.
“What do you want? What do you want me to say?” came the slow, dead voice.
“Nothing.” Dennis had forgotten just how obtusely cold his brother could be.
“The truth is, I didn’t really think of what it did to you so much as what it did to Mom and Dad. You always seemed so lucky, I guess, so on top of everything all the time.”
A chill passed through Dennis and with it deflation, a sense of his own diminishment. He looked away. He didn’t want to hear this. He didn’t want to be having this conversation. What did he want, then? He didn’t know, didn’t even know why he’d come. Gordon droned on. Hearing Lisa’s name, Dennis looked up.
“She sounded so sad. I didn’t know what to say.”
“What the fuck’re you talking about?”
Gordon’s face flushed. His chin quivered miserably. “You shouldn’t . . . you shouldn’t do that to her.”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” He stood up to leave and, seeing the two hideously wide white sneakers side by side at the bottom of the stairs, facing the door, waiting, wondered why, for what? For the same thing he had been waiting these twenty-five years? For nothing, he realized, for absolutely nothing, if it meant eating and sleeping, then waking again to discontent, this sense of illimitable loss. His brother was here, so what was this yearning for? It was supposed to be over now.
“You’re married, Dennis. You should be faithful to your wife.”
Dennis spun around. “Look, there’s only one way this is going to work. You want to come back here and live like this, fine. But
my
family is
my
business, not yours. You got that, Gordo?”
They stared at each other until Gordon looked away. Dennis started to open the door.
“They’re my family, too,” Gordon said under his breath.
It usually took only a few swings to get the right momentum, but some of the trash bags felt like dead weight. Two crates of rotting cantaloupes had come in, and the supplier said to throw them out. Another shipment was on its way. Gordon grabbed the bag with both hands, ready to heave it, when he heard a loud clang inside the swill-streaked Dumpster. He froze, listening. Too loud to be a squirrel or a rat. Something heavier, big, like a raccoon, maybe. Or a skunk. He stepped back.
“Fuck!” came a thin voice from inside.
He put down the bag and peered in, unable to see much over the piled trash. He jumped back as a crushed box of doughnuts flew past his head. He walked to the end of the Dumpster where a loaf of flattened bread and a deeply dented can of pineapple chunks lay on the ground among glinting splinters and rusted shards, the man-made till from years of trash haulings.
“Fuck!” There was a painful groan.
“Who’s that? Who’s in there?” For a moment there wasn’t another sound other than flies buzzing and, from the lone spindly tree beyond, the high-pitched, scolding chatter of a squirrel whose larder was being pilfered.
“I said, who’s in there?”
Still no reply. Up on the loading dock, the metal door creaked open, then banged shut. Neil was dragging out another stack of cartons to flatten and pile against the building. Seeing Gordon’s guarded stance, he hurried over. Gordon gestured to indicate someone was in there. Neil nodded, then disappeared for a moment under the loading dock. He returned dragging a long, rusted section of drainpipe. He began to pummel the trash in the Dumpster with it, all the while cackling, “Come on out, you beggar! You fucking beggar, you!”
A head popped up on the opposite end of the Dumpster, then came arms and a torso in a roll over the side, with Neil sprinting close behind. “Mother o’ God, look at this,” he said, pulling the girl from the straggle of paper-blown bushes. “Look what was in there, the very bottom of the food chain.”
The long cut on her left arm was bleeding down her fingers onto her pants.
“Jada!” Gordon said. Her wild hair was snagged with bits of trash and what at first appeared to be torn flesh, until, seeing seeds, he realized it was the slimy skin of a rotten tomato.
“Tell him to let go-a me!” she snarled through clenched teeth.
“Tell her to shut up!” Breathless as a cat with prey, Neil grinned, eyes gleaming with the pure, high-octane thrill of her pain. “Nice, huh?” He pointed at her. “Nice country we live in.”
Every time she tried to pull away, he yanked her back, laughing.
“What hole did you crawl out of?” he said.
“Fuck you!” she shot back.
“Or maybe you live in there with the rest of the maggots.”
“She’s my neighbor. I know her. She lives across the street from me,” Gordon said.
“I wouldn’t admit that to too many people if I was you, Gloom.”
“Tell the asshole to let me go!” Jada shouted.
“I don’t think she was doing anything wrong, Neil. See.” He showed him the box of broken doughnuts. “She was probably just looking for food.”
“Food? Jesus Christ, what planet are you from? She was out here trashing cars, and then she needed a place to hide.”
“But there aren’t any cars out here now,” Gordon said.
“Yeah, because she trashes them all!” Neil cried. “Come on!” He jerked her arm, pulling her up the steps onto the loading dock. “I’m calling the cops. We’ll let them figure out what to do with trash like this.” He opened the door.
“Okay! Okay, you do that and I’ll tell them you were tryna get me to do something on you and that’s how I got cut—tryna get away from you, you creep, you pervert, you fucking molester, you. Help! Help!” she screamed. “A man’s tryna molest me! Help! Somebody help me, please!”
Leo charged through the doorway, bloodied cleaver in hand.
Neil released her arm, and all at once in a long, feral streak, the girl sprang from the platform, disappearing into the verge of weedy trees behind the Dumpster. Leo stared in horror at Neil.
Jada had been avoiding Gordon. That same night he’d come to her door, rung the bell, knocked hesitantly, then hurried away. She hadn’t seen him since. It was midafternoon, and she was hungry again as she walked home from school. Her stomach ached all the time now. Even when she’d be eating, it would feel empty because she’d start wondering where or when she’d eat again. She wasn’t sure what day today was. Not Friday, she hoped, because the weekend meant no hot lunch, the one thing she looked forward to, her main reason for going to school. Today she had slipped an extra slice of pizza onto her tray to take home to Leonardo, but the bitchy aide made her put it back.
As she came by the drugstore, she looked to see who was working.
Please, not the Indian guy with the turban and eyes like periscopes.
He could see around corners. He had almost caught her with her hand in the box the other day.
“Yes!” The girl in the cape was behind the register, the one who told everyone she was a witch. She bent over the counter, too busy polishing long black fingernails to even notice the tiny Cambodian woman’s struggle to push her baby stroller in through the theft detectors. Jada held the door for the woman, then hurried to the back aisle where the few food shelves were. She reached behind the cookie display for the box she had opened last time. She stuffed a handful of Oreos into her pocket, then meandered over to the magazine display. She flipped through
Cosmopolitan
while the woman came down the aisle, balancing a jumbo package of diapers on top of the stroller. When the woman got to the register, Jada went back, filled her other pocket with the rest of the cookies, then shoved the empty box behind the others. “That’s a very pretty baby you got there,” she said on her way outside.
“Sank you!” the woman called after her.
“No, sank
you
,” Jada said, laughing to herself.
She ate half the cookies before she got home. She wet her fingers, stuck them in her pocket, then licked off the crumbs. The other half were for Leonardo. Last night, Inez had made her a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, which she’d tried to eat in the bathroom until Leonardo’s whimpering snuffles along the door bottom had made her feel so guilty that she’d given him the crusts. She had told Inez that her mother was going to be late, so could she have something to eat just to tide her over. Jada could tell Inez didn’t believe her, but the lie was easier between them.
Jada wasn’t sure anymore how long her mother had been gone. She had come home in the middle of the night with a scrawny guy with long hair called Tron. When Jada came out with her pillow and blanket so they could have the bed, her mother said no, to stay there, she and Tron were on their way somewhere, but they needed to get high first. His nose was running, and he reeked of cigarettes and sweat. “Hey, little pooch,” he said, and Leonardo jumped into his lap and licked his neck as he cut a hole in the empty Mountain Dew bottle. He stuck a straw in so they could smoke. Her mother went first.
Jada had drifted in and out of sleep to their crack-agitated voices from the other room. It was almost funny, the way they could talk to each other at the same time. Tron said he had been on the detox waiting list in Lowell for a long time. A hell of a long time. He should let her know when he got the call, Marvella said. She’d been through it, so she’d help him. She knew the drill. She’d been there, so let her know and she’d go with him. Moral support, that was the most important part. Yeah, moral support. Because, see, like that’s what she never got. Moral support. Yeah, that’s all anyone needs. So as much as Jada hated being alone, it would all be worth it if her mother was in some detox center right now with Tron.
The minute she got home she jumped onto the couch and fed Leonardo the Oreos, one at a time. When they were gone he burrowed his snout into her pocket, looking for more. She closed her eyes, laughing as his scratchy tongue licked her face. “I love you. I love you so much,” she said, holding him still so she could kiss her favorite place, the warm, musky underside of his silky ear. Everything would be different this time when her mother came home. Jada vowed to treat her better. She wouldn’t bitch so much about everything, and she’d keep the apartment so clean her mother wouldn’t want to ever leave it, and she’d study hard and get really good grades, so then her mother would probably start going to all those parents’ nights things they were always having and she would come back and tell Jada how proud she was to have her for a daughter, and all the mean things she’d ever said, like calling her “the abortion that lived” all the time, how it hadn’t been her talking but the drugs, because her Jada was the most beautiful girl in the whole world.
A loud banging made her sit up with a start. It was after five and she had fallen asleep watching television. Afraid Ronnie Feaster was back, pounding on the door again, she crept to the window and peered over the sill. Inez’s son’s old car idled at the curb, music booming from the speakers. In the distance came Gordon Loomis lumbering down the street with two full grocery bags. She didn’t dare go out. Ronnie Feaster and Polie had come by twice in the last hour. The last time, he said he was sick of waiting for the money Marvella owed him. Jada hollered out that her mother wasn’t there, but he didn’t believe her. He said to open the door before he kicked it in. Inez leaned out her window then and yelled at him to go away or else she’d call the cops. After he left, Inez came downstairs and asked where her mother was. “Asleep,” Jada lied, adding that she’d been sick for a few days. The whole thing was tricky: Jada had to be careful. She was pretty sure it was Inez who’d called Social Services the last time.